Podcasting from Magic Weekend Nagoya

Rich HagonFriday, June 10, 2011

et Pro Tour Statisician Richard Hagon be your guide through Magic Weekend Nagoya, home of the second Pro Tour of the 2011 season. If you're not a regular reader of event coverage, this is a great starting place to learn the top players and storylines that have shaped this season. With exclusive player interviews, analysis of deckbuilding strategies, explanations of formats and the PT season, and much more, it's a cornucopia of information.

MAGIC WEEKEND NAGOYA

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You can listen to each segment in the player to the right, or you can click on the link to listen to the file in your browser or right-click Save As to download to your computer. If you have iTunes installed on your computer, click here and you'll be directed to the Magic: The Gathering podcast in the iTunes directory.

It's one of the most exciting parts of the Pro season -- the morning of Day One for the Block Constructed Pro Tour. With a small card pool available, featuring Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, and New Phyrexia, the answers are right there in front of you -- if you can spot them. As the players arrive here in Nagoya to commence the battle, we go into the trenches to find out what the format is going to look like, straight from the people who count: the players themselves. Start your Pro Tour audio weekend right here with our Block Constructed Metagame Runaround!

At Pro Tour Paris earlier this year, Ben Stark took the title, taking him into the lead in the Player of the Year race. Now he sits in second place behind Owen Turtenwald, a man who has five Grand Prix Top 8 appearances this year. The number of Grand Prix he has played this year? Five. So, it seemed like a reasonable plan to talk to the number one and the number two about the draft format that forms the centerpiece of Pro Tour Nagoya. How many archetypes are viable? How many colors should you be playing? What's the role of Phyrexian mana? And how flexible should you be? All the answers come from Owen Turtenwald and Ben Stark. If you download this show and don't learn something useful about this draft format, it's a good bet you forgot to turn on your speakers. Seriously, these guys know the drill, and now so can you.

Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa is fast becoming one of the greatest players the game has ever seen. For many of us, the idea that anyone might one day legitimately enter the conversation with the likes of Jon Finkel, Kai Budde, and Gabriel Nassif (as the best three players of all time) was close to unimaginable. Now Paulo finds himself on track to put together the kind of career that forces us all to reconsider. He has seven Pro Tour Top 8s, including a title at Pro Tour San Juan last year. More than that, though, is the pace at which he has achieved these results. With fewer than 25 Pro Tours to his name, he has a simply astonishing rate of return, making the Top 8 better than 25% of the time. Join us as we sit with Paulo and look at the astonishing career he has had to date. A great player, and he could get even better.

It's the penultimate round of Swiss here at Pro Tour Nagoya, and that means there are no more excuses, no more hard luck stories. There's just winning and losing. In the feature match area, six players know that a win will put them on the cusp of the Top 8, while the losers will likely be left on the outside looking in. Luis Scott-Vargas faces Germany's Daniel Grafensteiner. Toshiyuki Kadooka of Japan faces regional rival Yong Han Choo of Singapore. That leaves an epic clash between Gaudenis Vidugiris and Ben Stark, with Stark looking to secure a second successive Top 8 berth. Find out what happens as the cards fall where they may.

While you may not be familiar with David Sharfman as a Pro Tour mainstay, perhaps he should be known as Mr. Magic Weekend. Sharfman's victory in Nagoya came thanks to the invite he earned by winning the Grand Prix held at Magic Weekend Paris in February. Rich Hagon went in-depth with Sharfman in the minutes after he swept Toshiyuki Kadooka in the Finals of Nagoya for this revealing interview.

You can also access previous studio podcasts by visiting the Podcast Archive.

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